48 Waterfowl. 



were only sixty or seventy yards off, still feeding towards 

 me. They came along quite slowly, and the ones nearest, 

 with habitual suspicion, edged away from the scattered 

 tufts of grass and weeds which marked the brink of the 

 creek. I tried to get two in line, but could not. There 

 was one gander much larger than any other bird in the 

 lot, though not the closest to me; as he went by just 

 opposite my hiding-place, he stopped still, broadside to 

 me, and I aimed just at the root of the neck for he was 

 near enough for any one firing a rifle from a rest to hit him 

 about where he pleased. Away flew the others, and in a 

 few minutes I was riding along with the white gander 

 dangling behind my saddle. 



The beaver meadows spoken of above are not com- 

 mon, but, until within the last two or three years, beavers 

 themselves were very plentiful, and there are still a good 

 many left. Although only settled for so short a period, 

 the land has been known to hunters for half a century, and 

 throughout that time it has at intervals been trapped over 

 by whites or half-breeds. If fur was high and the Indians 

 peaceful quite a number of trappers would come in, for 

 the Little Missouri Bad Lands were always famous both 

 for fur and game ; then if fur went down, or an Indian war 

 broke out, or if the beaver got pretty well thinned out, the 

 place would be forsaken and the animals would go un- 

 molested for perhaps a dozen years, when the process 

 would be repeated. But the incoming of the settlers and 

 the driving out of the Indians have left the ground clear 

 for the trappers to work over unintermittently, and the 

 extinction of the beaver throughout the plains country is 



